California Revisited
(Everyone I Meet Is From California)
Written by Dan Peek, ©1972
Found on Homecoming, Encore: More Greatest Hits, America's Gold, Hourglass, Horse With No Name, Highway, The Complete Greatest Hits, and Homecoming-DVD-Audio.

Heaven may be an answer
If you're lookin' for Eden in the sky
On your waters I see a strange reflection
Rumor has it I'll see you when I die

Everyone I meet is from California
There's dancin' in the streets in California

In California you watch the shadow dancer
Floating gently, gently on the sea
In California you're such a strange romancer
Come and see me when the world has set you free

Everyone I meet is from California
There's dancin' in the streets in California

Everyone I meet is from California
There's dancin' in the streets in California

Highway Highlight (from the box set booklet) When the America album was released in the U.S. in 1972, Warners initially thought that "A Horse With No Name" had been included on the British version. Eventually the error was caught, and the song was added, although a number of copies of the album were released without it. Another tune that almost slipped through the cracks was Dan Peek's "Everyone I Meet Is From California," released as part of a maxi-single in Britain with "Horse" and "Sandman" but not included on the U.S. album. This feisty fold-rock exercise was eventually recorded under the title "California Revisited" and included on America's next album, Homecoming. "I'm probably as proud of that song as any song I've ever written," says Peek. "I liked the lyrics--they were kind of weird and oblique. I had never even been to California, but when I would meet people, regardless of where I was, it seemed like virtually every person I ever met was from there. I thought, This is impossible. It was the place to be from, and I got a little fed up with it. Then, to add to my chagrin, Catherine and I broke up after college, and she moved to California. So it was like salt in my wounds." (Peek and his bandmates, of course, would end up living in the Golden State themselves in a few months.)